Our Friend
The large, orange squash on the porch cut to look like it’s puking out its own seeds from its mouth, circle hollow eyes where a candle will burn later tonight when the kids trick-or-treat. Outside of the trailer park, every house a Barbie Magical Mansion, French doors and pillars, bay windows and two-story decks. They sit on the street in the car, watch the darkness of their friends’ houses, the house its own kind of corpse. There is his face in the top right window, “There he is!” Darlene says. But instead three yellow eyes, all in a row, tails briefly entwined. A tapping on the back windshield so faintly under the loud bass, unrecognizable at first, as if not even there. Elijah revs the engine, exhaust suspended and then enters the backseat. The cats jump from the window.